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CHAPTER XI,
recommendations took sufficient account of the desire of many seamen
to spend between voyages comparatively long periods in their villages
and their value as a check to unemployment was further weakened by
the encouragement which the roster system would have given to the
old and the inefficient seamen to remain on the waiting list. But when
the Committee's recommendations were rejected as impracticable, the
importance of ensuring that the system adopted should operate to reduce
unemployment seems to have been overlooked. With one exception,
the steps taken in the last few years have not been calculated to have this
effect, and the problem to-day is as serious as it was in 1922. In Bombay,
according to the estimate of the Indian Seamen’s Union, which appears
to be approximately correct, there is employment at any one time for
only one-third of the number available for employment. In the Ship-
ping Office we found a number of serangs and butlers who, in spite of their
previous satisfactory service, had been out of employment for periods
varying from one to four years. The Shipping Master informed us that
he had no control over new recruits whose names were being entered in
the register, even though it was certain that no employment would be
available for the majority of them for a considerable time.
Position in Calcutta.

In Calcutta the position is equally unsatisfactory. According
bo the estimate of the Shipping Master, only about one-fourth of the
total number seeking employment can hope to be successful. Here too
there was for long the same indiscriminate registration of new recruits.
From the 1st July 1922 to the end of 1925 over 29,500 new men were
granted certificates to enable them to go to sea, while the number of those
who succeeded in obtaining employment at sea during these years was
less than 16,000. The position would have been even worse but for the
fact that from 1926 the Shipping Master, on his own authority, stopped
further registration of new recruits, except at the request of the officers
of the ships on whose articles they were to be signed on. As a result of
this action, the number of new men registered in the course of a year has
fallen from 10,000 to about 5,000. An attempt has been made at Calcutta
to construct a register of seamen, presumably in order to ascertain
the numbers available and possibly to facilitate employment by roster.
But the register in its present form is unwieldy and of questionable
value; it includes the names of seamen who entered service as early
as 1887, many of whom are now dead or have voluntarily retired
from sea service. The Shipping Master declared that he had no autho-
rity to remove a name from the register and that his instructions
were to register all seamen. As a result he had perforce inserted the
names of men who had been out of employment for periods extending
to 15 and 16 years and who were obviously unfitted for further sea
service
Principle of Rotation.
The problem has been aggravated by the tendency to concede
he demand that seamen should be employed in rotation in order to